Last Exile

Characters- unoriginal, shallow motivation, acted as plot devices more than anything, character development was random and unnatural, relationships between characters were spontaneous and poorly developed.

Dialogue- boring and stifled

Art and music- both fine, but art is kind of stiff and boring, especially during dog fights

Story and Setting- Cliche, and terrible. I have not been so uninterested in the plot since pokemon. Plus the pacing was just so horrendous. Scenes that should be fast are slow and boring. Scenes which could develop characters are random, misplaced, and sometimes a bit confused. Everything about the pacing is poor.

Comments: I compare this show to stuff like Robotech. But the ... reason why robotech was so awesome, was because of it's focus on characters. The character dichotomies and relationships were realistic and organic. There was nothing forced. The plot was basic, sure, but it was a character based series, which was surprisingly well written. The development and progression of the characters, relationships, and plot were done perfectly. Meanwhile, this seems like a bad knock off. Here's a comparison to detail what I'm talking about. In Robotech, you watch as Rick excels at piloting over a course of time. He isn't great at first, but he gets better and better and rises through the ranks as he proves himself. In The Last Exile, the main character flies the weaponized van-ship. At first, he does not do so well, but it does show him starting to get used to flying. You would think that he would prove himself in later battles as the show continues, but no. It implies that he got better, but ultimately we only see him fly the damn thing a handful of times. There is NO development.

Enjoyment: despite the fact that there is nothing good about this show, and I would traditionally drop it after the first few episodes, I continued to watch it out of some self hating boredom. I found a mild amusement out of this time waster, which keeps it from getting anything below a five. Ultimately, I don't recommend this series to anyone and I regret watching this pile of shit.

Last Exile is one of those shows with an amazing premise, some strong characters, good action, and an interesting lore and world for a story to take place in. Anime is a genra for strong imaginations, and Last Exile has that in spades, from the world the series is set in to the weapons of war which its nations use. So why only three stars? By all appearances LE has all the trappings of a great show, and has gathered quite the following, and for good reason. Don’t let my rating fool you, this is a good show which a lot of people will ... enjoy. It’s not one of those clearly overrated pieces of trash which I love to bash into (looking at you Elfen Lied) but it does have its share of flaws which, to me, held the show back considerably from living up to its full potential.

The premise is quite simple, deceptively so even. There are few animes out there which have managed to grab my attention so early, yet lose it so quickly. Dusis and Anatore, two powerful superpowers who dominate what little land is left inhabitable on the planets surface, are at war. To open the series viewers are treated to a gripping opening scene of two fleets of enormous flying battle ships “sailing” side by side, as teams of worthless riflemen fire at one another from ship to ship. Right off the bat the idiocy of the politics in this world are brought to light (and I mean that as a compliment); the riflemen on board serve no useful purpose, they can’t sink the enemy ship, they are never used for boarding either, are simply forgotten about after their numbers start to dwindle. They really are not good for anything except catching bullets, yet the captains of these enormous battleships insist on sacrificing them by the hundreds in order to fulfill a sense of chivalry, and “obey the rules of war” as it were. We are thrust into the boots of one lonely foot soldier, huddling afraid in the bowls of the ship as they prepare to open the doors and march out into the line of fire. It is a truly harrowing setting that reminded me not only of the battle formations made famous by Napoleon, but also of the charges across no man’s land in WWI. The riflemen fighting all know that their chances of survival are slim, and they know how pointless their sacrifice really is, but they march into the line of fire anyway prepared to give their lives away. It presents a very antiwar message, while also treating audiences to a very beautiful battle scene. Of all the things Last Exile got right, the opening is high amongst them.

Then there are our two main characters, Clause and Lavi who are two orphaned children who’ve taken up Vanship piloting as a means to support themselves (a Vanship being a sort of airplane with anti-gravity technology of the same kind the battleships use). Of all the characters in the show, early Lavi is my favorite (and there’s a big difference between early Lavi and late Lavi). She’s a confident, strong, take charge type of characters with a very close relationship to her best friend, Clause. The reason I liked her most I guess is because out of all of them she seemed the most believable. Whereas other characters go around doing stupid things to save girls in distress Lavi early on makes it clear she wants nothing to do with the dangerous missions Clause gets them into. This may seem selfish to some, but it’s also the most realistic portrayal in the series. Why should she want to risk her life for a mission she cares nothing about, or people she’s never met? No one else seems to have a problem with doing just that, so Lavi’s reluctance stood out in stark contrast to the sometimes baffling illogical decisions some of the characters make. But more on that later.

While taking part of a race in their home town Lavi and Clause unwittingly rescue a young girl name Ai (at least that was her name in the sub I watched) and become mixed in with a plot to destroy The Guild, an almost supernaturally powerful organization which controls the technology to all flight. After an all too brief battle with a Guild starship (literally planes that look like stars) they end up on the legendary Battleship Sylivanna captioned by the personality less Captain Alex, his love struck second in command Sophia, and his head fighter pilot the emotionally unbalanced Tatiana and her (supposedly) lesbian lover. Okay, that last part isn’t really said outright, but it did give me that vibe. When Clause and Lavi deliver Ai to the Sylivanna, which was their mission from the start, Clause for some reason suddenly distrusts the crew and decides Ai needs rescuing.

And this, in my opinion, is where the show starts to fall apart. See, Clause from the very beginning has no reason to think Ai is in any danger, or that she needs rescuing. In fact the Sylivanna crew just saved Ai from being killed, and were taking her on board their ship for protection. Sure, one of the men handles her kind of roughly, but he’s quickly scolded by the Captain for doing so. Despite doing exactly it was he was supposed to do, IE delivering this girl to the Sylivanna, Clause now thinks it a good idea to risk his life, and the life of his best friend, to rescue a girl he hardly knows from the very people he’d risked his life to deliver her to. For no reason.

It’s these kinds of lapses in logic that really hold the show back. Characters have little to no motivation to do half of what they do (especially Clause). What’s more, their goals and what little motivations they do have are in a state of constant flux, changing from episode to episode. For instance Moran, the rifle man from the beginning of the show, decides after the opening battle to quit his job as a rifleman. This makes sense considering the dire circumstances under which we were introduced to this character. However when they make him a mechanic on the Sylivanna all he does is reminisce about the “good old days” when he served as a rifleman before actually going back to the job he’d made such a big deal about leaving. Why does he want to go back? What is so terrible about being a mechanic on a ship where his captain doesn’t useless sacrifice his men? The people he works with are all really cool people, his commanders are descent, and there’s very little danger compared to his previous job. So what’s the problem, Moran?

Now let’s use Clause as another example. First he wants to bring Ai to the Sylivanna, but then he wants to rescue her from it. Then he doesn’t want to rescue her, he wants to keep her safe. But then it’s not about keeping her safe anymore, it’s about “seeing what’s in these skies” or some other nonsense like that. What’s the end result of all this? Characters who have no idea what they are doing, why they are doing it, or what they wish to accomplish. This is the main problem with the show.

Now to touch on what the show does well. The lore and backstory to Last Exile is really quite interesting. It does a really good job in creating a mystery for the viewers to try to piece together with what little info is given us. What is Exile? What does it do? Hoe does Ai play into all this? How is it that the Guild manages to hold such a stranglehold on the world? Last Exile does not reveal too much too early, which gives us the satisfaction of piecing the mystery together as we go along. But the real treats are the battle scenes. Fleets of huge floating battleships flying through the clouds as they fire their enormous cannons at one another. The battles in this series are some of the best I’ve seen. If only the show had more battle scenes and less bipolar characters I might be able to justify a higher rating. I also found the tech to be extremely fun. It’s a steampunk show, so you already know the general idea, but they use it in such inventive ways (such as a giant listening device that acts like a sonar).

The animation, though passible, is nothing to write home about. It’s really quite dull and colorless. A lot of browns, blacks, grey’s, more grey, dark grey, white, greyish brown, you get the idea. A little more color might have helped to liven things up a little bit. The music as well I found underwhelming. There are times I found the music to be quite inappropriate for the scene, in fact, and in other cases it was simply too loud. It’s not very often that the music actually manages to detract from the overall experience, but I found this the case for Last Exile.

So what’s the final verdict? Though I can fully understand why people love this show so much, personally I didn’t find it to be all that impressive. The world was interesting, the battles were awesome, and the tech was inventive, but the most important aspect of any story, the characters, just didn’t resonate with me. They were too bipolar, too wishy washy, too prone to doing dangerous things for unexplained reasons. The pacing was also quite dull; I honestly think they could have made this into a 13 episode series and it would have been the better for it. There weren’t 26 episodes worth of story to tell, so it just seemed to drag at times.

Will I recommend you see it? You betcha. It’s a classic anime series which I think most fans of the genra owe it to themselves to see at least once. Will I recommend that you buy it? Well for that the answer is no, especially at the inflated prices anime DVD’s go for. It’s a good show with many high points and positives that many people will find enjoyable. I personally didn’t, but that does not mean you will not.

Replay value; medium.

While I love the aesthetic of the show, I'm a sucker for steampunk after all, the story ultimately fell a bit flat for me. Much of the world and many of the characters were left under developed. Many things are never explained in any sort of detail and characters often seem to do things for no apparent reason other than progressing the plot. The only real back story we get is on Dio (my favorite character) and the parents who aren't even main characters.

I kept expecting these issues to be resolved but they were never addressed. Lastly, the end was a bit of a disappointment ... and didn't really showcase some of the cooler aspects of the ships and their crew. Still though, the nice little epilogue at the end really got me.

Cons, there's a lot of them:
● Painfully poor dialogues, 90% of them is filler, you can safely skip most of them
● Worthless plot with a lot of holes and convinient coincidences
● There's null tactical sense in the capital ship battles, they are there just for the pretty pictures
● Pathetic 3D graphics even for 2003, and below average production value in 2D scenes
● One-dimentional main characters . Complete lack of character development
● Poorly developed universe and politics of the planet/continent. There's some hints, but you can't really root for anyone in the show because you don't know how justified the wars they wage (maybe they're ... the bad guys or just stupid? we'll never know)
● No comedy relief or relatable supporting cast
● The show is about capital ships and fast 'oneships', but you'll gonna see the same 5 or so people on board capital ships (where's supposedly hudgreds or even thousands of sailors and marines serve) and will not know how they work from the inside, because all you'll see is a hangar bay and a bridge. That is sucks

Pros:
● Very good aesthetics, concepts and designs
● A lot of people in uniform, and all uniforms look cool and pretty
● A combination of victorian/byzantine styles + steampunk
● Some of the scenes look great in static (on screenshots)

I won't repeat what other people have said since I have disagreed with half of it and agreed with the other half, so I'll add something new, something that no one that watches anime ever seems to care about, which is sad. What are they teaching people or expecting people to believe when they write this stuff. I would have given this show a 9 if I wasn't so annoyed with the piss poor moral calculus of the writers and some of the characters that we are clearly lead to believe are cool. Alex Row numerous times tries to kill the two ... kids who are main characters. In the beginning he tries to shoot them out of the sky even though he knows they are kids, they are civilians, they are heroes who saved a child he calls 'cargo', and he knows that they are the the children of his mentors. He tries to murder them anyway. No apology either. Then after surviving through no fault of his own Alex, the supposedly coolest guy in the show who we are meant to look up to, bullies the kids, and puts them in extreme danger. Alex is a psychopath scumbag. In any just world he would endure long torture before dying. The fate any child murderer and torturer deserves. Yet everyone just accepts this as normal, rational, moral behavior. I'm not sorry to say it isn't. I am sorry that the morally bankrupt fans of many similarly morally bankrupt anime franchises do think it's fine. So this review is for you anime fans out there with no morals that find no problem with these kind of messages. You and your "Normal" can eat my @ss ho!e.

Okay, so here's the thing. The characters are likeable. The world is intriguing. It's a pleasant viewing experience...

But I literally forgot I was watching this like 4 times and still haven't finished it. I'd start it, get 4 or 5 episodes deep, then I'd get busy with other things for a few days and suddenly it's been two months and I'm like "OH YEAH, I was watching that", and then I'd pick it back up again and repeat that process until here we are almost a year later and I'm still only halfway through it and god help me I have a camping trip next ... week and will probably forget about it again until 2023.

There's nothing to dislike about the series; it's just not gripping in any way. It's like the acquaintance you have who is nice, but too polite. You get along with them well and you have nothing bad to say about them, but the two of you will never be best friends because they don't challenge your thinking or inspire you in any way.

It took me awhile to finally finish the series for Last Exile, but that's because I kept losing interest. Nevertheless, I can say that the concept for this storyline is mind blowing. My favorite part of the series was the characters and their character development. When you are given a specific person and as the story progresses, you will eventually grow to enjoy or dislike the personalities of each character as each episode goes by, providing you with a very detailed expression of what you think of a specific person, their relationships with others, and their overall attitude towards the plot.

The one feature that I ... had a huge problem with, and has overall affected the severely low score for this series that I have given it, is plot development. Like the character development, it expands the plot to include intricate details about the scenario that a person is currently watching at. However, the development is taken far too excessively and severely hinders the attention to key details by distracting it with too many medial details. Each episode is painfully expanded to its limits on one specific skit; such as, the vanship race takes up an episode and a half and is nowhere near important to the overall plot, except for specific points, like the introduction of another character. However, you end up missing these points until the very end when it causes a hindrance with the friction between characters.

Had they reduced the series to a legitimately smaller series, or even a movie, to the point where it's more "to the point" and less excess, I would have fallen in love with this anime. But, because the presentation is terrible compared to the concept, I have to give my overall score as is. Last Exile is an example of good concept, terrible presentation.

Aw, man... I really wanted to like Last Exile. There is a lot going for it; great graphics, a fascinating steampunk world, and an epic script. But sadly it all gets all but ruined by bad editing and directing. Dialogue is often stiff and riddled with awkward and pointless pauses. Events get little to no buildup, making the dramaturgical curve way too straight and even. In a story as epic as this, you need buildups and climaxes, but the dynamics get lost in a mess of wierd cuts and directing choices. And voice acting is far from consistantly great.

On the plus side, the graphics are ... really cool with awesome backgrounds that really gives life to the world. And the dogfighting scenes are mostly great. Sometimes the CGI clashes a bit with the traditional art style, but it didn't bother me all that much.

Sound effects and background music works well with setting the mood and enhance the immersion (an immersion that rarely lasts longer than to the next cut due to the awful editing). Opening track was not my cup of coke, but the ending theme went straight into my "good shit" folder.

The story is really complex, with lots of characters, political factions and side arcs that do a good job of obscuring most of the cliches that might arise. Best of all, the story is perfectly intertwined with the world in which it takes place. And what a world, by the way!

All was set for this to get at least an 8 in my book, and I'm really sad it crashed in on itself the way it did. I can't give it less than a 6 overall because I could kind of brain-edit it myself in real time, but you should not have to do that to enjoy a show. Maybe we can look forward to a total remake for an upcoming anniversary? Maybeprettyplease?

I gave a 6 to this serie because I think is too long for the simple story that it has, there were some episodes that I just fell asleep or gave up watching.
It has some high points, but it´s exhaustive. The artistic conception is well conceived and the soundtrack is outstandig (I think it´s the better thing in the serie, specially the steampunk overture "Cloud Age Symphonie" just brilliant and the wonderful romantic Over the Sky by the graceful Hitomi Kuroishi)
I still recommend it. =)

So... I finished Last Exile 10 minutes ago.

First thing's first : the story. The action takes place in a steam-punk/SF world and the details in the show make the good use of these elements. In the first episodes you can see a lot of flying machines, strange clothes and all sorts of locations that characterize a steam-punk universe. All of this is very well represented with beautiful animation. Actually the animation is the best part about the series. Aerial battles are amazing and the vanships are very detailed. Unfortunately I only got to see this in 720p on a 17' monitor...but it must ... be a real eyegasm to see it on a big screen TV. I will do this sooner or later.
Sound and characters... well this is where the bad things start to show up. I need to listen to the full OST but the opening theme is really good. There is a certain "fighting/dancing scene" where the music is memorable. Moving on to the characters... well some of them were great some were just to fill up the empty space. The only noticeable thing is the close relation between Claus and Lavie. Sophia is boring as hell, Alex is dull once you see that all his lines are in the same area and Mullin... well let's just say that he is one of the characters put in just to fill up the empty space. He has no actual value for the show.
As usual, I keep the bad things for the end. First of all, the steam-punk theme was a great ideea and it was very well made. Why did they have to screw it up with the SF...? There are some huge holes in the plot and the fact that you only know detailed stuff only about Lavie and Claus does not help at all...

In conclusion, I think that Last Exile was made more for the eye and less for the brain. If you can ignore the weak character design and weak story and just be able to be amazed of the beautiful animation and sound, than this is a five star anime. It's awesome. However... I can't do that. With all the stuff lacking I can only give it a 6.

Without a doubt, the strong point of this series is the construction of its universe. While the character development isn't bad, it's not really a standout point either. That's why some people might find it boring.
But I still enjoyed it quite a bit, even though, as I mentioned, it can get boring at times. But what it does have, it does well.
I think this series never really reached its full potential, which is a shame. Either way, I recommend that everyone should give this series a chance, especially people who are a bit older. I wouldn't recommend it to very young people due to the ... lack of action and comedy.